The Robins travelled to yesterday’s FA Vase semi-final first leg at Highworth Town on Hartlepool United’s team coach – it’s like a nightclub on the International Space Station; the wifi doesn’t work, mind – and were characteristically kind enough to offer me a ride.

The crack was typical, too: poker, Pepsi addiction and...pensions. Parks’ insurance cover sounds canny, though should the worst befall his employment status he could always turn his hand to a milk round.

The bus stopped off en route so the lads could stretch their legs at Aston Villa’s Bodymoor Heath training ground. Suppose Fents has his uses, after all.

Some time last night it got me back to a lock-in down Shields. Some time this morning I probably got home.

This matters. I did a Newcastle match recently, have done a fair old whack of Sunderland. Jeezaloo. Was it always this dull, that vacuous?

Of course not, and the people retain their right to suffer. Er, I mean go.

But by the sharpest of contrast, consider this coming Saturday. The second leg. Three bells down the Morgue (Daren Persson Stadium; he’s an undertaker, dur).

Tickets have sold like super-heated Swiss roll.

A town has rallied around its team because it has handed them a much-needed source of pride, and passion. It resonates, for familiarity. Because Bowsa sells you an Advanced Radiator, Kev Hughes teaches your kids and John Grey – third-best bar tender in Barca – serves you a No 5.

Then big Bri Smith arrests you.

It’s the connect, and why recently a small band of brothers have burned the midnight oil to produce an astonishingly good – and good-looking – magazine to raise funds for both the club and testicular cancer charity checkemlads.com.

There is football – interviews with Graham Fenton, SuperMac, David Kelly and Michael Bridges, plus an excerpt from ‘Touching Distance’, Martin Hardy’s new book about Keegan’s ‘Entertainers’. Alas, it’s not a scratch ‘n’ sniff.

There’s also fashion, and music – Paul Weller’s drummer Steve White, while local band The Middens have cut a contemporary cover of ‘When the Red Red Robin...’, which any buying the mag can then download for nowt.

They’re launching and flogging the mag - a snip at a fiver – before, at and after Saturday’s game when, whatsmore, The Middens will be performing a post-match gig at Chirton Social Club.